In UK ports, outrage at sacked P&O Ferries workers

Claire Cooper stood with about 30 others at Liverpool docks, braving an icy wind to protest about P&O Ferries sudden sacking of a quarter of its workforce.

"If 800 people can lose their job by Zoom, anybody in the country can lose their job. There's a line drawn in the sand and this is it," she told AFP.

Two weeks have now passed since the workers lost their jobs and were replaced by agency workers, most of them from overseas, on worse pay and conditions.

But from the Channel ports on England's south coast to Scotland and Northern Ireland, there is no let-up in the protests.

Unions have mobilised and the government has vowed to end such sharp practices -- as well as claim the scalp of the company's chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite.

He outraged MPs at a parliamentary committee last week by admitting that the company deliberately ignored its legal obligations to consult on the job losses.

"P&O are acting like pirates of the high sea," thundered Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, blasting Hebblethwaite for "audacity" in admitting the breach.

Cooper, who teaches disabled children, said she was appalled that a company boss can admit breaking the law, seemingly with impunity.

"There's one law for them and one for us," she added,

The situation is a painful reminder for workers in Liverpool.

Nearly 30 years ago, a dockers dispute over sacked colleagues lasted more than two years, in one of the longest industrial actions in UK labour history.

John Lansdown, who first started work for P&O Ferries in 1998 and who comes from a family of seafarers, said it had been an "emotional rollercoaster".

"It's been a devastating impact on people's lives and livelihood," he said.

"It's not about the money. It's about the principle of seeking justice and making people responsible."

Replacing often long-serving staff with workers earning on average ?5.50 ($7.23, 6.52 euros) an hour -- or less -- has caused as much anger as the manner of the sacking.

The company, part of the Dubai-based DP World group, called the rates "competitive" in international shipping.

But not Daren Ireland, the northwest England regional organiser for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT).

"The wages are not fair, are they? At the end of the day you've got these multinational shipping companies who are making multi millions of pounds," he said.

"P&O owners, DP World, make ?3 million a day. You have Peter Hebblethwaite, the CEO of P&O, sitting in front of select committee saying that he's content the seafarers sailing out of the port of Liverpool to Dublin can have an average wage of ?5.15 an hour...

"That is poverty pay."

P&O Ferries has said it had no choice but to take action, faced with ?100 million a year losses after the coronavirus pandemic devastated international travel.

Without radically cutting its costs, it risked having to make its remaining 2,200 employees redundant.

Ireland points out that P&O Ferries took advantage of government handouts during the pandemic to keep the very staff it had now got rid off.

Their replacements are mostly from overseas, recruited by agencies in India, the Philippines, Colombia or other countries where wages are low.

They are staying on board P&O vessels, effectively keeping them in international waters, which allows the company to pay them well below European levels.

The staff they took over from, most of them British or Irish, were also paid below the minimum wage, which rises to ?9.50 an hour from April 1.

Unions have been trying for "decades" to raise awareness of the issue, said Ireland, noting that P&O staff in France or the Netherlands were not affected.

There, labour laws give more protection.

P&O said it decided to risk paying the maximum penalty in the UK, where fines are capped, and also that some sacked staff will receive a pay off of ?100,000 or more.

Shapps is pushing his European counterparts to agree a minimum wage on cross-Channel and other routes, and a ban on companies that flout the rules.

But Ireland said ministers could have acted sooner -- and been tougher.

"The government could have done some emergency legislation, they've done it with the pandemic they could have injuncted P&O," he said.

"The whole issue is more now what's stopping another employer from doing the same."

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